5 Hour of Code activities students will love

5 Hour of Code activities students will love

Get ready for CS Education Week and Hour of Code!

5 fun ways to learn to code in an hour

Join people across the globe who are making cool things with code by participating in Hour of Code this week. Hour of Code is a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science and make it more accessible to everyone through fun coding projects. At a time when women still receive only 19% of computer science degrees – and women of color only receive 4% of computer science degrees – introductory programs that demystify computer science and give young people a chance to learn about code in a hands-on way can make a big difference. To participate, all you have to do is pledge to spend one hour doing a coding activity (on your own, with your students, or as a family) during Computer Science Education week – we’ve selected some of our favorite (and free!) Hour of Code activities below.

Turn your favorite pictures into an image gallery using code. Do you have a few favorite pictures from a vacation or an art project you’re dying to share? Taking a cue from some of your favorite websites, build an app that shows users a beautiful gallery of pictures. In this activity, you’ll use a block-based coding language like MIT’s App Inventor or Thunkable to build your gallery.

Tell an interactive story using code. Two characters meet in a world and discover a surprising object. What happens next? You’ll create an interactive story using code by programming dialogue and animating interactions between characters and their surroundings.

Take on an aquatic adventure in Minecraft by solving puzzles using code! In this activity created by Microsoft for Code.Org, you’ll get to design and control a character as they go on an underseas adventure. While exploring the deep sea, you’ll solve puzzles by using a block-based coding language.

Learn the basics of HTML and CSS to make a digital greeting card. Learn about two important programming languages – HTML and CSS – as you create a webpage that doubles as a greeting card. Learn how to add pictures, headlines, text, and lists of things you want to celebrate or remember to your card.

Learn how the features that allow you to draw on instagram or snapchat photos work. This activity will show you how to draw a line on the screen as the user drags a finger around – and then you can doodle on photos of your friends!

Code is everywhere – and it should be for everyone! Take an hour to explore computer science and play with code with one of these Hour of Code activities, and celebrate all of the cool things we can make, do, and learn with code.